Electronic – Generating pulses via timer match output or timer ISR

If possible I'd suggest selecting a microcontroller that supports a counter operation using the timer inputs; rather than manually incrementing a counter inside an ISR (which at high frequencies quickly ends up saturating the microcontroller activity) you allow the hardware to handle the counting. At this point your code simply becomes a matter of waiting for your periodic interrupt then calculating the frequency.

To extend the range and make the frequency counter more generalised (removing the need for multiple ranges at the expense of a little more work for the MCU) you could use the following technique.

Select a periodic interrupt rate that allows for measurement accuracy at the highest input frequency; this should take into account your counter size (you need to select the timer period such that the timer counter will not overflow at the maximum input frequency). For this example I'll assume that the input counter value can be read from the variable "timer_input_ctr".

Include a variable for counting periodic interrupts (should be initialised to 0 at startup); for this example I'll refer to this variable as "isr_count". The interrupt period is contained in the constant "isr_period".

Your periodic interrupt should be implemented as (C pseudo-code):

void timer_isr()
{
  isr_count++;
  if (timer_input_ctr > 0)
  {
    frequency = timer_input_ctr / (isr_count * isr_period).
    timer_input_ctr = 0;
    isr_count = 0;
  }
}

Obviously this rough example relies on some floating point math that may not be compatible for low-end microcontrollers, there are techniques to overcome this but they are outside of the scope of this answer.

My first assumption from the symptom is that you have a single cathode resistor, which would explain everything. However, you say this is not the case and that you have individual 100 Ω resistors on each anode line.

The answer then must be that whatever is driving the cathode can't handle the combined current. Apparently you are driving the cathode with just a microcontroller output, which has insufficient current sink capability. Do the math. You want 10 mA thru each of 7 segments. That means whatever is holding the cathodes low has to be able to handle 70 mA. A microcontroller pin is very very unlikely to do that. See the datasheet.

The solution is to add a transistor that can sink the current from each of the cathode connections:

70 mA is easy for any discrete transistor you will be able to get. Let's say the transistor has a minimum guaranteed gain of 50. That means the base current needs to be 70mA / 50 = 1.4 mA. Figure the B-E junction drops 700 mV. With 3.3 V drive from the micro, that leaves 3.3 V - 700 mV = 2.6 V accross the base resistor. 2.6 V / 1.4 mA = 1.9 kΩ, which is the absolute maximum allowed base resistor. Given that, I'd use 1 kΩ between the digital output and the base.

Note that this will invert the common cathode logic from what you had. The microcontroller output now has to go high to enable a digit.